Formed In Response To Sputnik I Launch

It seems we've only heard about it for a few years... but the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is celebrating its 50th anniversary this Thursday. The agency is better known by its acronym, DARPA.

The Washington Post reports the agency considers its best program managers to be "freewheeling zealots" with big ideas. The staff has been called "100 geniuses connected by a travel agent." And the boss describes his agency as a home for "radical innovation."

Agency director Anthony J. Tether says DARPA conducts "...the highest-risk type of research you can have. DARPA will take a chance on an idea with no data. We'll put up the money to go get the data and see if the idea holds."

DARPA was formed as part of the desperate US response to the successful launch of the Soviet man-made satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. In the intervening half-century, DARPA ideas and grants have been responsible for the first computer mouse, carved from wood with one button, and the blueprint which created the internet itself.

DARPA is used to handling large chunks of cash, and that experience will come in handy when it's time to settle the tab for the birthday party. While the agency itself reportedly employs only about 240 people, the celebration will involve a dinner for 1,700 alumni, friends and partners Thursday night in Washington.

Recent DARPA-supported projects of note in the aerospace community include a number of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) programs, and a search-and-rescue gyroplane design under development by Groen Brothers.

FMI: www.darpa.mil